The program “Changing platforms of Memory Practices-Conference” in Groningen, September 10-12 that is now online. One of the key note speakers is Megan Sapnar Ankerson talking about “My Personal Web History: Using the Wayback Machine as Technology of memory”.

Other interesting panel speakers for this list will be Catherine Summerhayes (Australian National University) talking about Google earth as a site for remembering and erasure and Niels Kerssens (University of Amsterdam) about the various traditions of practice and discourse around the relationship humans historically had with computers, Rik Smit (University of Groningen) about Sociotechnical Practices of the “New Memory Ecology”.

As a pre-event to the conference, there will be an expert meeting on September 10 about Hands-On History Exploring New Methodologies for Media Research, Teaching, and Curating.

User : PiotrusCC BY 3.0

How can we challenge the exclusively textual approaches to media history and opt for a more experimental and hands-on approach to cultural heritage? The University of Groningen’s Film Archive and the Network for Experimental Media Archaeology, focused on media heritage, are working on innovative methodologies for engaging with past media technologies by creating situations of re-use to experience and understand the complex relationship between the materiality of media devices and the performative qualities of such objects.

You are kindly invited to the presentation of their concept of a new digital platform used for the recording and sharing of data and experiments, and to discuss new, experimental, apparatus-oriented forms of media research, teaching, and curating. Among Speakers are Giovanna Fossati (Eye Film Institute The Netherlands / University of Amsterdam), Andreas Fickers (Luxembourg University), Annie van den Oever, Bernd Warnders, and André Rosendaal (University of Groningen), Andrea Haller (Deutsches Filminstitut / German Film Museum Frankfurt am Main), Ludwig Vogl Bienek (University of Trier), Nick Hall (Royal Holloway, University of London), Johan Oomen (Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision).

The event will take place in Infoversum’s 3D Dome and its director, astronomer Shawn Laatsch, will demonstrate the specific technologies and value of the 3D Dome for academic research and education as part of the program.

This article describes some important non-textual or “under the hood” aspects which are generally unknown to researchers and users of web archives. It argues that providers of web archives should in future make available such information and consider this as an integral part of web archives.

This article was written for and accepted by RESAW Conference, “Web Archives as Scholarly Sources: Issues, Practices and Perspectives”, 8 – 10 June 2015, Aarhus University, Denmark.

“Media Scholars and Amateurs of All Countries and Disciplines, Hands-on!”

Recent years have witnessed a growing turn to experimental historical research in the history of media technologies. In addition to archival investigation and oral history interviews, historians and enthusiasts are increasingly uncovering histories of technology through hands-on exercises in simulation and re-enactment. Equipment lovingly restored by amateurs, or preserved by national heritage collections, is being placed in the hands of the people who once operated it, provoking a new and rich flood of memories.

The turn to experimental research raises profound methodological questions. The unreliability of narrative memory is well proven, but what do we know about the limits of haptic and tactile memory? To what extent is it possible to elicit useful memories of technological arrays when parts of those arrays are missing or non-functional? How do the owners of old equipment shape the historical narratives which are stimulated by their collections?

Hands-On History is a colloquium designed to facilitate discussion of these issues between historians, users, curators and archivists (amateur and professional) who are making use of and taking part in these historical enquiries. In addition to a series of keynote presentations by leading scholars in the field, the event will also include stimulating workshops on specific focus areas. While the focus of the event will be on media technologies, broadly defined, we invite contributions from other areas of technology and from other academic disciplines.

This engaging volume celebrates the life and work of Theodor Holm “Ted” Nelson, a pioneer and legendary figure from the history of early computing. Presenting contributions from world-renowned computer scientists and figures from the media industry, the book delves into hypertext, the docuverse, Xanadu and other products of Ted Nelson’s unique mind. Features: includes a cartoon and a sequence of poems created in Nelson’s honor, reflecting his wide-ranging and interdisciplinary intellect; presents peer histories, providing a sense of the milieu that resulted from Nelson’s ideas; contains personal accounts revealing what it is like to collaborate directly with Nelson; describes Nelson’s legacy from the perspective of his contemporaries from the computing world; provides a contribution from Ted Nelson himself. With a broad appeal spanning computer scientists, science historians and the general reader, this inspiring collection reveals the continuing influence of the original visionary of the World Wide Web.

Dedicated to French Heritage, Memories and History of the Web in the 90s, WEB90 focuses on a particularly important decade, in France as in several European countries, for digital networking’s and computing’s turn to the general public. How can we map the Web of the Nineties? Who were the key actors of its adoption and massification in France? What did Web browsing mean for Internet users of the Nineties? These questions, and many others, will be explored within the WEB90 project funded by the French National Research Agency and through this academic blog.